APEX - Recent Changes in P94

General

During Period 94, the ESO time slots are expected to be scheduled in early August, late September and mid December.

The exact distribution of the observing time between the APEX partners can be found on the APEX web pages. Time-critical observations should only be requested during the ESO runs.

Large Programmes with APEX using Poor PWV conditions: In order to make the best use of the time where the PWV is high (PWV>2 mm) ESO invites Large Programmes for those conditions. Poor PWV large programmes must be clearly identied as such in Box 5 and 8 of the large programme proposal form. Ideally a "Poor PWV LP Programme" therefore consists of a large sample of targets covering a wide RA range. The proposal must demonstrate that the scientic goals can be reached with only a signicant subset of the observations completed. Poor PWV-LPs may cover up to 4 consecutive semesters.

Instruments

The new 350 micron camera ARTEMIS is offered conditional to its successful commissioning in May/June 2014. ARTEMIS will cover a eld of view of 4'x2' at 350 microns. Observations at 450 and 200 microns may be offered in future periods. If the commissioning is delayed, ESO may execute ARTEMIS programmes with SABOCA instead.

SABOCA is not offered in Period 94 as the same capabilities are offered by ARTEMIS.

FLASH and CHAMP+: These PI instruments are offered to the ESO community on a collaborative basis with MPIfR. Large programmes or time critical observations with PI instruments will not be accepted. Users who would like to use FLASH or CHAMP+ must contact the instrument PI, Dr. Rolf Guesten (rguesten[AT]mpifr-bonn.mpg.de), at least two weeks prior to submitting their proposal. Members of the PI team should be included as CoIs on the proposal. The operation of these PI instruments requires the presence of the instrument team so all ESO FLASH and CHAMP+ observations will be scheduled on fixed dates; the exact dates have not been determined yet.

FLASH observations will be done by the PI team during a maximum of 3 days. Preference will be given to proposals using the dual-beam, wide-bandwidth capabilities of FLASH due to limited ESO observing time.

SUPERCAM: Users of this new PI instrument are encouraged to collaborate with the instrument team (PI Chris Walker iras16293 [AT] gmail.com). During Period 94, SUPERCAM will only be available in December. For observing time calculations, users should use the SHFI/APEX-2 On-The-Fly calculator, but divide the total time request by 16. This factor takes into account both the 64 pixels and the higher receiver temperature of the Supercam receivers compared with SHFI.